Month / February 2014

A person named SammyIAm created Moppy which is a “Musical controller for an Arduino-floppy drive set up.”. He then posted a video of Moppy performing Soft Cell’s Tainted Love. Marc Almond found the video and decided to repost it this time with his own vocals on top!

“Several people showed me the brilliant floppy drive rendition of Tainted Love by Gigawipf here on YouTube so I thought it might be fun to add the vocal! :-)” – Marc Almond

On this Valentine’s Day I am very happy to release a new single to the world! This is a special release for me as this time the music is centered around someone else’s vocals. Andi is a DJ in the EBM, synthpop, coldwave world. She runs the night Synthicide in New York City. She also has a wonderful 80s post punk book coming out later this year called Some Wear Leather Some Wear Lace. We co-wrote about 6 songs. Our band name is Schadenfreude and this EP is called Spectra. We picked the best two and then I redid the music in my home studio. I fell in love with these songs over the past few months and I am really pleased to let you hear them. From a technical standpoint you are hearing some nice equipment including a lot of my Eurorack modular and Ensoniq ESQ-1.

“The blood it drips through my hand. I watch it pool I take the command. I don’t think only what I feel. I’m not sure if this can be real.” – Schadenfreude

A few posts ago I posted a video that Radio Shack ran during the SuperBowl. It showed how their stores are being updated so they were no longer like the old 80s stores. Well the 80s Radio Shack stores were incredible. I had a TRS-80 CoCo. I loved looking through all the small electronics parts they sold. I even had an Armatron. There is a great website that lets you look through old Radio Shack catalogs called radioshackcatalogs.com. While most everything they sold now simple is part of your cell phone it’s an amazing trip down memory lane for nerd like me.

“At this website you will be able to view these old 1939-2011 Radio Shack and Tandy Electronics’ catalogs, sale flyers, brochures, and more…year by year…page by page.” – radioshackcatalogs.com

One of the greatest directors and one of the best actors are together in a new movie I am looking forward to seeing. The Zero Theorem is directed by Terry Gilliam (Brasil, 12 Monkeys) and stars Christoph Waltz.

“A computer hacker’s goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.” – imdb.com

Here is my (The Horrorist) DJ Set (link) from Sunday’s event called Synthicide! It was at Bossa Nova in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I played a mix of classic and new EBM and New Beat. It was DJ Andi’s event; she DJed and also booked DJ Stalagmike of the Pyramid Club’s Defcon party. They are both true classic EBM music lovers so it was a true time machine in there! I had a wicked time and I will be DJing again soon in NYC. A ton of live shows kick off in Italy in a couple of weeks and a new special EP I did is about to be revealed. A full set of photos from Synthicide II: click here

As you know I love most anything 80s. Apparently people from my age bracket are clearly working at advertising agencies these days. I used to love Radio Shack. My first computer was a TRS-80 CoCo. Radio Shack was a destination for me. I miss the isles of small parts and such. Sadly, today’s RS is basically a cell phone store. As a frequent flyer on Delta I noticed the past few safety videos have been pretty funny. The latest one is the best of course. Finally we end this blog post with a look at what Instagram would have looked like 30 years ago.

“The 80s called … they want their store back. 80s celebrities invade a RadioShack to take back their old stuff and make room for the RadioShack of the future.” – Radio Shack